How Was The Referendum Plan Created?
With maintenance needs mounting, our district sought to complete a thorough review of our schools’ infrastructure to identify our most pressing needs and prioritize repairs.
Our district directed school construction consultants at ICS to evaluate our buildings’ physical conditions and educational adequacy based on current guidelines. ICS also helped facilitate listening sessions with residents to hear feedback directly from community members. ICS has extensive experience working with school districts across North Dakota and Minnesota, to find solutions to schools’ building and maintenance needs.
Altogether, our district took several steps to ensure the final plan addressed our greatest needs and aligned with the wants of our community:
Comprehensive facility study to evaluate the physical condition of our buildings.
Demographics and enrollment projections to anticipate enrollment trends and future class sizes.
Educational Adequacy Assessment to evaluate our learning spaces based on current educational standards.
Over a half-dozen listening sessions and surveys with students, staff, community members, board members, and administration.
School board meetings to evaluate budgets for maintenance and several options to address the most critical needs.
A community meeting to preview the proposed investments to residents.
A plan built by and for our community
Feedback received during listening sessions and surveys revealed that many of our community’s top priorities aligned strongly with our most pressing maintenance needs:
In addition to these maintenance needs, students, staff and community members consistently identified a lack of dedicated space for physical education, dining, and events at the elementary school as a significant concern. With this in mind, our district took effort to include a solution to these problems in the plan alongside other needs like the secure entrance and additional parking.